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I fixed OP and will update that going forward. I love Independence Hall 3. Independence Hall 1 would work fine, but I just think 3 is the better picture. I like our options though. I think we have some really great options for landmarks. Gaming side is tough, nothing really jumps out at me, but I think Catan 4 is hilarious and I'd love to do it if it was kosher. I really like the design of Catan 3, but like @ilta said we would need to redesign it instead of using the direct artwork, so we would need some help there. Pandemic is really cool and I think it would look alright on a coin. I like the idea of D&D on the coin, but I haven't been able to figure out something I love that would work. I think it'd be cool to show DMs some love and have a DM behind their screen similar to Matthew Mercer's pic below, but more straight on. I love the simpler D&D 1 option, but I'm worried whether the artwork would work on the coin.

I fixed OP and will update that going forward. I love Independence Hall 3. Independence Hall 1 would work fine, but I just think 3 is the better picture. I like our options though. I think we have some really great options for landmarks. Gaming side is tough, nothing really jumps out at me, but I think Catan 4 is hilarious and I'd love to do it if it was kosher. I really like the design of Catan 3, but like @ilta said we would need to redesign it instead of using the direct artwork, so we would need some help there. Pandemic is really cool and I think it would look alright on a coin. I like the idea of D&D on the coin, but I haven't been able to figure out something I love that would work. I think it'd be cool to show DMs some love and have a DM behind their screen similar to Matthew Mercer's pic below, but more straight on. I love the simpler D&D 1 option, but I'm worried whether the artwork would work on the coin.

Do we think Matt Mercer or Chris Perkins would perhaps work with us to create the picture we'd like? I don't know if any contractual obligations would restrict them from doing something like that.

A couple of things. First: I'm pretty sure the wood to sheep & back design is lewd in some way, but it's beyond my feeble imagination. It's a clean design, but I just have this feeling it might not be appropriate. Second: I think many of the gaming designs are excellent, but this is the inaugural PAX Unplugged event, and (goodness knows why) Philadelphia is the venue, so can we please celebrate that? I'm OK with a gaming design for future events (every PAX is gaming), but the first Unplugged is special, so I would like to promote the Philadelphia venue. The skyline is tricky because it is changing (include none, one or two Comcast buildings?) while it nicely freezes the state of the city at the time. The Liberty Bell and Independence Hall are classic Philadelphia icons. If a photo-shop expert could substitute the Rocky Statue in front of "Independence Hall 3", with the Pacman and Ms Pacman edging (I love this!), that would combine old and new Philadelphia icons with some tongue in cheek, and cinch my vote.

A couple of things. First: I'm pretty sure the wood to sheep & back design is lewd in some way, but it's beyond my feeble imagination. It's a clean design, but I just have this feeling it might not be appropriate. Second: I think many of the gaming designs are excellent, but this is the inaugural PAX Unplugged event, and (goodness knows why) Philadelphia is the venue, so can we please celebrate that? I'm OK with a gaming design for future events (every PAX is gaming), but the first Unplugged is special, so I would like to promote the Philadelphia venue. The skyline is tricky because it is changing (include none, one or two Comcast buildings?) while it nicely freezes the state of the city at the time. The Liberty Bell and Independence Hall are classic Philadelphia icons. If a photo-shop expert could substitute the Rocky Statue in front of "Independence Hall 3", with the Pacman and Ms Pacman edging (I love this!), that would combine old and new Philadelphia icons with some tongue in cheek, and cinch my vote.

The front of the coin contains a city representation, while the back has the gaming representation. So it's not a choice between Philly or gaming.

In Catan you can trade resources with other players.
If you need wood, but have extra sheep, you might say aloud "Wood for Sheep" (or is that the other way around? I've never been sure if you state what you're offering first, or what you're seeking.)
Which as everyone has an inner 12 year old, gets a chuckle, because wood has connotations.

I got the thumbs up from kiddercorp on the hexagon design. I am working on the template now and as soon as I have something I'll post it here so all of you can take a look. Right now I am having difficulty with the text. Corners are tough. They separate the words too much in my eyes. The other challenge is that we will have slightly less real estate on the coin if we go with the traditional 1.75" size.

@ArcSyn I've played with a lot of different options with the hex. @bluebombardier really hit me with that hex idea.

I'll go ahead and share what I have. The inner hex versions looked terrible. I included one below to give you an idea of what I was working with. So, the last one is something I just mocked up in my efforts to make things look cleaner.

Hex Template 1

Hex Template 2

I think Hex Template 2 looks so much better than the other hex options I was able to put together, but we'll have less room for picture due to the shape change if we stay at the 1.75" size. We could make the overall size bigger making more room for the picture and keeping the border the same size, but this should give us an idea.

I tend to be the coin guy who rails against changing the shape and size of coins, but Hex coins for (even if just the first) Unplugged is a thing I am all in on.
I won't be attending, but I'm going to make sure to get a coin!

I know that Pac man and pellets are the classic style, but how do you all feel about meeple and resource blocks for the border?

I was thinking about a tabletop version of the border but there's nothing I love quite as much (that I'm talented enough to create. Read: I'm not talented) as the pacman border. At one point I was thinking of doing dice shapes with the pips and all that. I'll try to put something together for meeple and resource blocks but I'm not confident that I can make it look decent haha.

I tend to be the coin guy who rails against changing the shape and size of coins, but Hex coins for (even if just the first) Unplugged is a thing I am all in on.
I won't be attending, but I'm going to make sure to get a coin!

The entire time thinking about this I never wanted to change the coin. I like the uniformity of the coin designs, but this seems special and a hex version of all the PAX Unplugged events laid out on a table in the future makes me very happy.

I would not be averse to having the Unplugged coin always be a hex, tbh. That could be its "thing", regardless of the featured image on the gaming side. Bonus: after a few years, you can tile the coins!

I prefer Hex Template 2 but I agree, you're losing a lot of space and the non-symmetrical bordering ends up fighting the overall hex shape. What if you made the text and pac-people smaller so that a word / image was centered along each edge? Something like.... this? (again, just a fast and dirty mockup)

@ilta yeah I played with the text size a lot. I was holding my coin and I kept thinking about how nervous I was to make the text too much smaller than the 12pt the template was at. I definitely can't make it fit at 12pt, so I lowered it to 11pt in HT1. I think in your example it is 9 or 10pt maybe less. Pretty tiny. With that said, I am drawing up the landmark side with HT2 and it doesn't look like I can fit "Philadelphia, PA" in without making it 10pt, so I'd be fine with that version if everyone preferred that. It definitely makes more room for the picture. I'm going to choose some of the popular options tonight and stick them in the HT2 template to see what they look like. I'll post them here so you all can see too. I imagine that we'll be a little disappointed with the real estate on the inner hex. While point to point the circle and hex are the same size I think the coin will feel even tinier irl.

@ilta yeah I played with the text size a lot. I was holding my coin and I kept thinking about how nervous I was to make the text too much smaller than the 12pt the template was at. I definitely can't make it fit at 12pt, so I lowered it to 11pt in HT1. I think in your example it is 9 or 10pt maybe less. Pretty tiny. With that said, I am drawing up the landmark side with HT2 and it doesn't look like I can fit "Philadelphia, PA" in without making it 10pt, so I'd be fine with that version if everyone preferred that. It definitely makes more room for the picture. I'm going to choose some of the popular options tonight and stick them in the HT2 template to see what they look like. I'll post them here so you all can see too. I imagine that we'll be a little disappointed with the real estate on the inner hex. While point to point the circle and hex are the same size I think the coin will feel even tinier irl.

I hear you, man. The times I've gone back and forth over text size in postcard designs, I can't even tell you.

I mean, one possible solution is to just make the hex bigger, so that instead of 1.75 point-to-point, it's 1.75 edge-to-edge. That might earn us back some 12-point type and a sense that the inner ring isn't so hurt. What's the word on feasibility of that from our good friends at kiddercorp?

@ilta yeah I played with the text size a lot. I was holding my coin and I kept thinking about how nervous I was to make the text too much smaller than the 12pt the template was at. I definitely can't make it fit at 12pt, so I lowered it to 11pt in HT1. I think in your example it is 9 or 10pt maybe less. Pretty tiny. With that said, I am drawing up the landmark side with HT2 and it doesn't look like I can fit "Philadelphia, PA" in without making it 10pt, so I'd be fine with that version if everyone preferred that. It definitely makes more room for the picture. I'm going to choose some of the popular options tonight and stick them in the HT2 template to see what they look like. I'll post them here so you all can see too. I imagine that we'll be a little disappointed with the real estate on the inner hex. While point to point the circle and hex are the same size I think the coin will feel even tinier irl.

I hear you, man. The times I've gone back and forth over text size in postcard designs, I can't even tell you.

I mean, one possible solution is to just make the hex bigger, so that instead of 1.75 point-to-point, it's 1.75 edge-to-edge. That might earn us back some 12-point type and a sense that the inner ring isn't so hurt. What's the word on feasibility of that from our good friends at kiddercorp?

I'll shoot them an email, but it seems like they are more than capable of making all sorts of sized coins. I feel comfortable with moving forward with the assumption that they can do 1.75 edge to edge. I'll work on expanding the template tonight so we'll have an accurate look at what we have for real estate on the inner hex.

Ah, so I already made the template too large for the HT2 option above. When creating it I was using measurements for the circle and made edge to edge 1.75" and point to point is 2.02" so what we have above is probably what we'll stick with unless you all want to make it larger than that. Let's see how our landmark and gaming options look inside it and we can see if it is necessary.

The inner hex is 1.327" point to point and 1.010" edge to edge. Comparative to 1.427" on the inner circle. Nothing changed with the images below. I just wanted to repost since there has been a lot of discussion today.

I fixed OP and will update that going forward. I love Independence Hall 3. Independence Hall 1 would work fine, but I just think 3 is the better picture. I like our options though. I think we have some really great options for landmarks. Gaming side is tough, nothing really jumps out at me, but I think Catan 4 is hilarious and I'd love to do it if it was kosher. I really like the design of Catan 3, but like @ilta said we would need to redesign it instead of using the direct artwork, so we would need some help there. Pandemic is really cool and I think it would look alright on a coin. I like the idea of D&D on the coin, but I haven't been able to figure out something I love that would work. I think it'd be cool to show DMs some love and have a DM behind their screen similar to Matthew Mercer's pic below, but more straight on. I love the simpler D&D 1 option, but I'm worried whether the artwork would work on the coin.

Do we think Matt Mercer or Chris Perkins would perhaps work with us to create the picture we'd like? I don't know if any contractual obligations would restrict them from doing something like that.

btw I meant to respond to this and forgot to. I'm not opposed to this at all, but I think we would need more time to hear back from their people than we have. Our timeline is pretty tight especially if we have a new coin design that we are giving to kiddercorp. There's been some talk behind the scenes about the timeline and we need to get the ball rolling on a final design pretty soon. We are in good shape right now, but it's something that needs to be constantly in the back of my mind. Waiting for a response from either of those guys just wouldn't be something I think we have time for. However, it would be super cool. Maybe for next year. The goal is to get the coins in everyone's hands prior to Nov 17th.

Yeah looking at a coin now. I don't think it's too bad (1.75" on outer edge to edge, 1.01" inner edge to edge), but we definitely lose significant real estate with a hex design change. Even the regular hex with the text issues I have is 1.19" edge to edge and 1.37" point to point on the inner hex.

Okay here are the new hex options using the hex template 2. I just chose the ones people mentioned. I think I kept the same content in each picture, but it will be smaller for sure. If we prefer the full hex template option we can vote on it. I added these options to the OP so we can compare too.

The more I look at it, the more I'm not liking the compromises to accommodate a hex shaped coin. I love the idea of it, but it just doesn't look as nice with the text as the round coin does.

I mocked this up, but I'm thinking of swapping the resource hexes with the Japanese version ones, and maybe we could put a wood trading port in the middle? Or something. Might be too complex to really put on a coin though.

edit: even looking at my own mock up I'm not liking it. The basic pandemic image is sounding better and better just for it's simplicity of a pawn and cubes.